Sergio Risaliti on Andrea Francolino's Crack Rubbings During Lockdown

Sergio Risaliti profiles artist Andrea Francolino, who creates rubbings of cracks in the ground using paper, filtered earth, and spray adhesive. Francolino's process involves walking, bending, and pressing paper onto cracks, then titling each work with precise date, time, and GPS coordinates. In April 2019, he began a year-long project exploring monumentality, order, repetition, and the boundary between materiality and spirituality. During the COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020, Francolino adapted by working from his windowsill, documenting a crack at the threshold between inside and outside. He executed his last rubbing on March 8, 2020, in a deserted Milan, then continued from home, recording daily video snippets. Risaliti compares the works to Land Art by Hamish Fulton and Richard Long, as well as Alberto Burri's cretti and Lucio Fontana's slashes, but emphasizes the unique material testimony of each crack. The resulting images, hung vertically, transform horizontal ground fissures into painterly abstractions that speak of geological time, human intervention, and existential fracture.